Menu

I decided to start running…

Garmin Forerunner 205

I am the Great Inheritor. Many Christmas presents have I bought my lovely-yet-talented wife, whom I’ll call {Diwali} – only to end up inheriting the items years later. A Sirius-XM receiver installed in her car as one example. The car it was installed in, as another example. And a Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS watch.

Garmin Forerunner 205

Before we had children, {Diwali} did a lot of pretty serious “casual” running. Both in triathlons, and in 10k and half-marathons. For her training, I got her a GPS watch. The 305-model has a heart rate monitor but it seemed an unnecessary addition (for us) to what has turned out to be a very useful device.

Then we had children, the skies darkened, all that doom-and-gloom (I kid, I kid). She fell out of running, and in starting my own program I unearthed the Garmin, installed the software, and put it into use.

Lots to like. Backlit display, loads of features, long battery life, beep alerts, and crazy resolution + data-tracking during runs. That and the ability to overlay run route data onto Google Earth maps (in the software) is pretty cool too.

Very few dislikes. The buttons on the face are sensitive so one must take care not to brush them, lest one’s data set become fragmented. And some of the GPS readings and resultant data are curious. I have found unusual “slow spikes” during run intervals when I know I did not drop to a Slow Walk pace, and other “leading” or “following” acceleration or deceleration data at the start / end of intervals that threw off the overall [km/minute] average for the segment. Minor complaints and easily chalked up to eccentricities in the GPS signal data due to atmospheric or local-reflective interference.